Alexis

Sienna

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This summer, you worked on a collection of clothing made out of trash. How did you decide on which pieces of trash you wanted to work with?

I’ve been collecting trash my entire life. I knew what I had and what I wanted to recycle. It was basically using what I already had, instead of getting new things that would eventually turn into trash. Looking at what you have and how it goes together is kind of how any collection would be made. This was no different to me. I had to buy a few things to implement the ideas, but those items were about connectivity and holding the main parts together. 

 

How did working with rejected materials

spark your creativity?

Well, nothing was one big piece of fabric. Everything was already made into weird shapes. So it was fun to figure out what to create with unconventional forms. 

 

Would you consider the collection more of an exercise in creativity or would you encourage people to take it as a more serious step in fashion where they would be wearing parts of trash in everyday lives?

I would say it’s not at the level it needs to be where people could consider it as actual fashion. The Trashion pieces were more wearable art. If you are going out and wearing straight up plastic it may not be viable as an everyday option. It’s more conceptual, so I would consider it more of an exercise.

 

Something that came out of the Trashion collection that you are making into more of an everyday object is the Book Bag. When you are creating the bags, are you choosing based on the cover or are the books certain

favourites of yours?

At the time of the Trashion show, I was using books that were being discarded. It was almost like a stroke of genius that I saw books being thrown away and came up with the idea for an accessory. Now that I’ve gone into production with them for the public, I go look for covers which fit the theme of my collection. I do read the backs to make sure the content is something I would want to encourage people to read. I did a collection of Romance Novels. It was not hard to find a beautiful cover in that section, but some of the things you find in that writing can be kind of iffy. So many things play into certain stereotypes, which lead to fantasies that are not well written.